Download or read book The Grandest Madison Square Garden written by Suzanne Hinman and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: November 1891, the heart of Gilded Age Manhattan. Thousands filled the streets surrounding Madison Square, fingers pointing, mouths agape. After countless struggles, Stanford White—the country’s most celebrated architect was about to dedicate America’s tallest tower, the final cap set atop his Madison Square Garden, the country’s grandest new palace of pleasure. Amid a flood of electric light and fireworks, the gilded figure topping the tower was suddenly revealed—an eighteen-foot nude sculpture of Diana, the Roman Virgin Goddess of the Hunt, created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the country’s finest sculptor and White’s dearest pal. The Grandest Madison Square Garden tells the remarkable story behind the construction of the second, 1890, Madison Square Garden and the controversial sculpture that crowned it. Set amid the magnificent achievements of nineteenth-century American art and architecture, the book delves into the fascinating private lives of the era’s most prominent architect and sculptor and the nature of their intimate relationship. Hinman shows how both men pushed the boundaries of America’s parochial aesthetic, ushering in an era of art that embraced European styles with American vitality. Situating the Garden’s seminal place in the history of New York City, as well as the entire country, The Grandest Madison Square Garden brings to life a tale of architecture, art, and spectacle amid the elegant yet scandal-ridden culture of Gotham’s decadent era.
Download or read book The Murder of Stanford White written by Dr. Gerald Langford and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evelyn Nesbit was a popular American chorus girl, an artists’ model, and an actress. In the early part of the Twentieth century, the figure and face of Evelyn Nesbit were everywhere, appearing in mass circulation newspaper and magazine advertisements, on souvenir items and calendars, making her a cultural celebrity. But it was on the evening of June 25, 1906 that she gained worldwide notoriety, when her husband, multi-millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw, shot and murdered architect and New York socialite Stanford White on the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden—leading to what the press would call “The Trial of the Century”. The Harry K. Thaw—Evelyn Nesbit—Stanford White story remains one of the great crime sensations of the Twentieth Century. Stanford White, an enormously rich man of high social position and supposedly blameless reputation, nevertheless led a private life that was at variance with his public reputation. His lavish stag dinner parties were well-known, and later played an important part in the famous murder trial. A gripping read.
Download or read book God in Gotham written by Jon Butler and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A master historian traces the flourishing of organized religion in Manhattan between the 1880s and the 1960s, revealing how faith adapted and thrived in the supposed capital of American secularism. In Gilded Age Manhattan, Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant leaders agonized over the fate of traditional religious practice amid chaotic and multiplying pluralism. Massive immigration, the anonymity of urban life, and modernity's rationalism, bureaucratization, and professionalization seemingly eviscerated the sense of religious community. Yet fears of religion's demise were dramatically overblown. Jon Butler finds a spiritual hothouse in the supposed capital of American secularism. By the 1950s Manhattan was full of the sacred. Catholics, Jews, and Protestants peppered the borough with sanctuaries great and small. Manhattan became a center of religious publishing and broadcasting and was home to august spiritual reformers from Reinhold Niebuhr to Abraham Heschel, Dorothy Day, and Norman Vincent Peale. A host of white nontraditional groups met in midtown hotels, while black worshippers gathered in Harlem's storefront churches. Though denied the ministry almost everywhere, women shaped the lived religion of congregations, founded missionary societies, and, in organizations such as the Zionist Hadassah, fused spirituality and political activism. And after 1945, when Manhattan's young families rushed to New Jersey and Long Island's booming suburbs, they recreated the religious institutions that had shaped their youth. God in Gotham portrays a city where people of faith engaged modernity rather than floundered in it. Far from the world of "disenchantment" that sociologist Max Weber bemoaned, modern Manhattan actually birthed an urban spiritual landscape of unparalleled breadth, suggesting that modernity enabled rather than crippled religion in America well into the 1960s.
Download or read book After the Vote written by Elisabeth Israels Perry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-06 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon after his inauguration in 1934, New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia began appointing women into his administration. By the end of his three terms in office, he had installed almost a hundred as lawyers in his legal department, but also as board and commission members and as secretaries, deputy commissioners, and judges. No previous mayor had done anything comparable. Aware they were breaking new ground for women in American politics, the "Women of the La Guardia Administration," as they called themselves, met frequently for mutual support and political strategizing. This is the first book to tell their stories. Author Elisabeth Israels Perry begins with the city's suffrage movement, which prepared these women for political action as enfranchised citizens. After they won the vote in 1917, suffragists joined political party clubs and began to run for office, many of them hoping to use political platforms to enact feminist and progressive public policies. Circumstances unique to mid-twentieth century New York City advanced their progress. In 1930, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized an inquiry into alleged corruption in the city's government, long dominated by the Tammany Hall political machine. The inquiry turned first to the Vice Squad's entrapment of women for sex crimes and the reported misconduct of the Women's Court. Outraged by the inquiry's disclosures and impressed by La Guardia's pledge to end Tammany's grip on city offices, many New York City women activists supported him for mayor. It was in partial recognition of this support that he went on to appoint an unprecedented number of them into official positions, furthering his plans for a modernized city government. In these new roles, La Guardia's women appointees not only contributed to the success of his administration but left a rich legacy of experience and political wisdom to oncoming generations of women in American politics.
Download or read book The News at the Ends of the Earth written by Hester Blum and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 search for the Northwest Passage to early twentieth-century sprints to the South Pole, polar expeditions produced an extravagant archive of documents that are as varied as they are engaging. As the polar ice sheets melt, fragments of this archive are newly emergent. In The News at the Ends of the Earth Hester Blum examines the rich, offbeat collection of printed ephemera created by polar explorers. Ranging from ship newspapers and messages left in bottles to menus and playbills, polar writing reveals the seamen wrestling with questions of time, space, community, and the environment. Whether chronicling weather patterns or satirically reporting on penguin mischief, this writing provided expedition members with a set of practices to help them survive the perpetual darkness and harshness of polar winters. The extreme climates these explorers experienced is continuous with climate change today. Polar exploration writing, Blum contends, offers strategies for confronting and reckoning with the extreme environment of the present.
Download or read book Supreme City written by Donald L. Miller and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning historian surveys the astonishing cast of characters who helped turn Manhattan into the world capital of commerce, communication and entertainment --
Download or read book The Grand Gypsy A Memoir written by Ottavio Gesmundo and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-06-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ed Sullivan have in common? Ottavio Canestrelli crossed paths with each. He performed with the Krone Circus in Italy and Germany from 1922 to 1924 on the eve of Hitler's rise to power; he witnessed a rally for Mahatma Gandhi in India in 1931; and he appeared twice on the Ed Sullivan Show during the 1960s. In The Grand Gypsy, Canestrelli, with his grandson, Ottavio Gesmundo, tells the story of a man who witnessed historical events as he toured with his family through five continents and countless nations, including experiences fighting in World War I and the excavation of the Sphinx in Egypt. It shares memories of life in the circus, filled with daring feats and tragic mishaps. With over one hundred and seventy historical photographs included, this memoir chronicles a circus dynasty from the late nineteenth-century in Europe to the new millennium in the United States.
Download or read book Old Penn Station written by William Low and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-03 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated account of the construction, history, and demolition of one of the most famous railroad stations in America-- New York City's Penn Station.
Download or read book The Big Roads written by Earl Swift and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the twists and turns of one of America’s great infrastructure projects with this “engrossing history of the creation of the U.S. interstate system” (Los Angeles Times). It’s become a part of the landscape that we take for granted, the site of rumbling eighteen-wheelers and roadside rest stops, a familiar route for commuters and vacationing families. But during the twentieth century, the interstate highway system dramatically changed the face of our nation. These interconnected roads—over 47,000 miles of them—are man-made wonders, economic pipelines, agents of sprawl, uniquely American symbols of escape and freedom, and an unrivaled public works accomplishment. Though officially named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, this network of roadways has origins that reach all the way back to the World War I era, and The Big Roads—“the first thorough history of the expressway system” (The Washington Post)—tells the full story of how they came to be. From the speed demon who inspired a primitive web of dirt auto trails to the largely forgotten technocrats who planned the system years before Ike reached the White House to the city dwellers who resisted the concrete juggernaut when it bore down on their neighborhoods, this book reveals both the massive scale of this government engineering project, and the individual lives that have been transformed by it. A fast-paced history filled with fascinating detours, “the book is a road geek’s treasure—and everyone who travels the highways ought to know these stories” (Kirkus Reviews).
Download or read book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil written by John Berendt and published by Random House. This book was released on 1994-01-13 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.
Download or read book Hunting in Many Lands written by Theodore Roosevelt and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Introducing Aunt Dimity Paranormal Detective written by Nancy Atherton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An irresistible introduction to everyone's favorite bestselling cozy mystery series. Watch out for Nancy Atherton's latest, Aunt Dimity and the King's Ransom, coming in July 2018 from Viking! Over the course of her New York Times bestselling series, Nancy Atherton's Aunt Dimity has become enormously popular. Now, with the first two mysteries in one volume, Introducing Aunt Dimity, Paranormal Detective makes it easy to get a taste of the ghostly sleuth's delightful debut. In Aunt Dimity's Death, Aunt Dimity's American niece, Lori Shepherd, had long thought her mother's childhood tales of Aunt Dimity were merely comforting bedtime stories. But when a pair of lawyers informs her that her mysterious aunt has just died and made the down-on-her-luck Lori a rich woman, she finds a reason to believe. Aunt Dimity and the Duke finds the benevolent spirit helping Emma Porter--forty, fat, and frumpy--tame a Duke's overgrown garden and discover romance along the way. These two tales continue to enchant Atherton's devoted fans and, packaged together, are sure to attract even more new readers to the series.
Download or read book Stanford White Architect written by Samuel G. White and published by Rizzoli International Publications. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Stanford White (1853-1906), arguably the most celebrated American architect of his day, was the visionary genius of the illustrious architecture firm McKim, Mead White. A defining figure of the Gilded Age, White lived an extravagant life, which ended prematurely in a sensational death. His celebrity as a result was such that perceptions of the man have to some degree distracted attention from an extraordinary body of work. Now, more than a century since his passing, the enduring quality of White's architectural legacy becomes ever more apparent as the circumstances of his life and death fade to the background. In acknowledgment of this legacy, Stanford White Architect comprehensively explores White's sumptuously rich oeuvre - from the residences he designed for himself and his wife, Bessie; to the extraordinary and opulent houses he designed for others; to those works beyond the residential. Stanford White Architect will serve for generations to come as a vivid testament to a resplendent life in architecture."--From book jacket.
Download or read book An American Renaissance written by Phillip James Dodd and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-13 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, which has been painstakingly researched and beautifully photographed over many years, takes a close look at twenty of the finest examples of Beaux-Arts architecture in New York City. While showing public exteriors, its focus is on the lavish interiors that are associated with the opulence of the Gilded Age--often providing a glimpse inside buildings not otherwise viewable to the public. The pages recount not only the fascinating stories of some of New York's most famous and significant Beaux-Arts buildings, it also recalls the lives of those who commissioned, designed, and built them.
Download or read book Bloomington Past Present written by Ira Wilmer Counts and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Good places are shaped by the gifts of nature and by the labor and love of many people over generations. The city of Bloomington, tucked away in the forested hills of southern Indiana, is one such place. Three of us who have worked here, played here, reared children here, and set our roots right down to the limestone bedrock made this book to chronicle and celebrate our home town." Thus begins Bloomington Past and Present, a volume that anyone who has lived in--or even just passed through--this memorable city will want to have and pass down to future generations of Bloomingtonians. Photojournalist Will Counts gathered some of his own photographs taken over a long career, along with photographs by more than a dozen other fine artists. Some drawn from archives, some taken recently, these images capture the city's people and places. The essay "Loving This Place" by Scott Russell Sanders leads the reader on a walk through Bloomington today, evoking the feel of the city, its human fabric and natural setting. In "Old Times and New Times in Bloomington," James H. Madison writes about what Bloomington once was, tracing changes in the community from the 19th century on through today's complex and vibrant civic scene. "Across from the fire station and post office rises the limestone mass of First Methodist, the grandest of our churches, one known for fine music and powerful preaching. In general, as you move west from here to the far fringes of Bloomington, the preaching becomes hotter and hotter, ranging from Baptists and African Methodist Episcopalians on through various brands of evangelicals, apostolics, and Pentecostals; and as you move east from here the preaching generally becomes cooler, ranging from Presbyterians and Episcopalians, through Catholics and Lutherans, on out to the Quakers, who keep their silence." --Scott Russell Sanders "There were Bloomington residents at the beginning of the twenty-first century who had heard the Metropolitan Opera perform Aida in the University Auditorium in 1942; given their sex histories to Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s; subjected their teeth to the stannous fluoride tests that produced Crest toothpaste in the early 1950s; listened to Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy explain why the Vietnam War was wrong in 1968; heard not only Elvis but also Bill Monroe, the Supremes, and Ray Charles; participated eagerly in a new curbside recycling program begun in the early 1990s; bought sushi and tofu at the grocery store; and listened to the Dalai Lama more than once. The small town in southern Indiana was hardly isolated or ordinary." --James H. Madison
Download or read book George B Post Architect written by Sarah Bradford Landau and published by Sources of American Architectu. This book was released on 1998 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George B. Post (1837-1913), one of the preeminent American architects of his time, is known not only for the quality of his many buildings but also for his contributions to both the technology and the practice of architecture. Two of his skyscrapers, the 20-story World (Pulitzer) Building and the 26-story St. Paul Building, were the tallest buildings in New York when they were completed. This work offers a chronological presentation of his career, illustrated with bandw and color photos and archival drawings. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Great Fortune written by Daniel Okrent and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-11-30 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this hugely appealing book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, acclaimed author and journalist Daniel Okrent weaves together themes of money, politics, art, architecture, business, and society to tell the story of the majestic suite of buildings that came to dominate the heart of midtown Manhattan and with it, for a time, the heart of the world. At the center of Okrent's riveting story are four remarkable individuals: tycoon John D. Rockefeller, his ambitious son Nelson Rockefeller, real estate genius John R. Todd, and visionary skyscraper architect Raymond Hood. In the tradition of David McCullough's The Great Bridge, Ron Chernow's Titan, and Robert Caro's The Power Broker, Great Fortune is a stunning tribute to an American landmark that captures the heart and spirit of New York at its apotheosis.
